Ordering the urban body: professional planning in early twentieth-century Britain

Abstract

The early twentieth century has been regarded as a crucial period in the development of planning in Britain during which the key elements of the modern profession were put in place. At the time, planners represented their practice as a progressive answer to the environmental legacies of the Victorian era, capable of contributing decisively to the social and political reform of British society. Existing histories dealing with the subject uniformly locate planning within a historical trajectory that emphasizes its links with philanthropic experiment, reformism and the growth of the welfare state. This article scrutinizes such key propositions in order to show some of the ways that planning can be located within an alternative historical trajectory in which questions of orderliness, expert knowledge and government emerge to take priority. It examines the presence of rivalry among early professionals, the methodological commitment to civic surveying and the way planners sought to make use of the interconnections between space and social life to wield power over the environment and the private lives of urban dwellers.